Dutch composer Henk de Viliger’s condensation of Ricard Wagner’s The Ring | An orchestral adventure will not be to everybody’s taste, san voices and any version that would squash the 17 hour magnum opus in one. Conductor Neeme Jarvi brought it to the Philadelphia Orchestra over the weekend. 

De Viliger’ aerial approach of the Wagnerian panorama is a marvel of scaled architecture. In Jarvi’s hands a forward symphonic narrative and the attentiveness of the soloists, didn’t try to compete with operatic territory.

Fab on this arrangement, fortissimo and crescendo, foreshadows and sonic disappearances and that ever important triangle.

Jennifer Montone’s French Horn, those offstage heralds was the musical heart of the piece, except for that charging horn section, but for the flank of harps, led by the consistently inestimable power of lead harpist Elizabeth Hainen. The stalwart concertmaster David Kim led the unwavering precision and clarity of the left strings, but it is the cellos and bass guard that brought those Teutonic flybys back to sonorous ground.